5th adc meeting

ESA-FAO GEOPortal STATUS & PLANS

Mirko Albani

http://www.geoportal.org.
The ESA-FAO GEO Portal is/was:

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  Developed by ESA in collaboration with FAO.
  
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  Currently operational and available on line.
  
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  One of the three candidates developed in response to a set of requirements from the GEO Secretariat for the implementation of a GEO Web Portal serving the GEO User Community.
  
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  Part of the GEOSS Common Infrastructure currently in the Initial Operational Capability phase.
  
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  Based on Open Source components, it can be freely installed and configured at GEO members’ premises.
  
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  It can be configured to create a Portal for a specific SBA.
  
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  A gateway to Global Earth Observation data, information and services that are of interest to the GEOSS user community.
  
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  It complements Community Portals and other Portals operated by GEO Members and Participating Organizations and that do not belong to any single member or organization.
  
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  The GEO Portal contains today more components/services and information than the one available in the registries (additional info is routinely added for new registered and non registered components/services, content management).
  

The ESA-FAO GEO Portal Services are based on the GEO recommended standards and following the Geospatial Portal Reference Architecture of the OGC. The GEO Portal provides a variety of services: Geospatial Portal Service; Portrayal Viewer Service; Interfaces to Catalogue Services; Browse through a comprehensive directory of service providers and; Retrieval of Earth observation education, training and capacity building resources.

The ESA-FAO GEO Portal Current Status:

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  Operations and content management secured with same service level as other ESA web portals:
  
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  Any resource newly available to GEOSS will be accessible through the GEOPortal (coupled to the GEOSS Clearinghouses and GEOSS Registries).
  
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  Already widely used: thousands of visits per month from many countries around the world.
  

Next steps, ESA Participation to AIP Phase 2:

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  GEO Portal in cooperation with FAO.
  
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  FedEO EO Community Clearinghouse in cooperation with Eumetsat, International Charter “Space and Major Disasters”, CNES.
  
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  SSE – Workflow, Conformance Testing and Test Environment.
  

Conclusions:

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  As part of the GCI IOC, the ESA/FAO GEO Portal already constitutes a main access point to worldwide information on Earth Observation capabilities and services.
  
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  ESA proposal for AIP Ph2 consists of an environment where: new GEOSS services can be built and GEOSS components can be tested with respect to a set of consolidated HMA and OGC standard based interfaces; access is provided to catalogue services with the standard interfaces and; access to GEOSS resources and data is provided to the GEOSS User community.
  
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  ESA has secured the operations and content management of the GEO Portal including improvements and upgrades.
  
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  Feedback and needs from GEOSS User community, IOC Task Force and GEO Secretariat will be the main driver for the evolution of the GEO Portal.
  

Comments and Discussion:

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  M. Albani: There are 2 search mechanisms: at the top of the page is a local search, and “GEOSS Clearinghouse” is a distributed search.
  
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  Comment: there should only be one search that does both a local and distributed search and combines the results.
  
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  Comment: “GEOSS Clearinghouse” would not be understood by users, and the mouseover comment also isn’t clear.
  
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  Question: Would it make sense to have an option tracking (to have users volunteer to include their usage)?
  
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  Question: Is it portlet compatible? M. Albani: Yes it is.
  
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  Question: Do you have the capability to track usage? M. Albani: At the moment we do not.
  
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  Comment: there is an easy to use capability in Google to track all of that information for you.
  

GEO Secretariat will request that each portal keep user statistics.